The canceled Buffy spinoff Better Than Angel
From Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The resounding success of Buffy the Vampire Slayer led to the development of one angel Spin-off that was about the titular vampire with a soul, played so memorably by David Boreanaz. Admittedly, this show overall fell short of the quality of the original show, but angel is rightly considered one of the best spin-offs in television history. What for many Buffy However, what fans don’t realize is that we almost have something that may be even better than angel: a Faith spinoff that focuses on Eliza Dushku’s popular Vampire Slayer.
The Buffy Faith spinoff
This idea comes from Tim Minear, one angel Author who later became an Emmy-nominated executive producer of American horror story. After Buffy the Vampire Slayer When the series ended in 2003, Minear wanted to follow up that series with a separate Faith spin-off that would follow the adventures of this Slayer after she returned in Season 7 to help Buffy save the world. Minear originally envisioned his show as “Faith meets Kung Fu.”
This is, of course, a reference to the fantastic 1970s television series starring David Carradine, in which the main character wanders the Wild West righting wrongs wherever he encounters them. While Buffy Focusing primarily on the fixed Sunnydale location, Minear wanted the title character of the Fath spin-off to be “probably on a motorcycle, crossing the Earth and trying to find her place in the world.” He acknowledged that this show was “going to get an arc at some point,” but he felt that “the idea that it was rooted somewhere seemed wrong to me” and that “the idea that it was constantly moving seemed wrong to me.” seemed right.”
While she originally appeared in BuffyKeeping Faith moving in this spin-off would actually be worth it for one of the biggest storylines angel. As Minear points out, in this show Faith broke out of prison to help stop Angelus (the amoral and sadistic monster that Angel turns into when he loses his soul). She later went to Sunnydale to help Buffy stop the First Evil, but after her jailbreak, “some people were after her,” which could explain Faith constantly wandering from place to place in her own spinoff .
Why it didn’t happen
After BuffyFans were hungry for more and a Faith spinoff likely would have been a success given Eliza Dushku’s popularity. So why was this show never made? The main reason is that Dushku felt Sarah Michelle Gellar “Sometimes you have to go with your gut, and my gut told me that maybe I need to try something else that’s just different.” In short, she wanted to do work that had nothing to do with the Buffyverse, which is why she eventually became the main character of the supernatural drama True calling.
As hardcore Buffy Fans know that this Faith spinoff is just one of many canceled projects in Whedon’s universe. There have also been ideas for a Giles spinoff, a Spike movie, an animated spinoff, and even a Slayer School show featuring some of the newly minted Slayers from Buffy’s seventh season. While all of these could have been fun (especially the Giles show), none had the potential of a spin-off starring Faith. That’s because, as the renegade Slayer once joked, fans are always willing to “thank God” for “hot chicks with superpowers.”
